The simple life

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2010/3/7/lifefocus/5779891&sec=lifefocus

Sunday March 7, 2010

The simple life

By ROUWEN LIN

Many Sarawakians who live in Kuala Lumpur miss the peace and quiet of their hometowns.

IN Ba’Kelalan, an area encompassing nine villages near the Sarawak-Kalimantan border, the occasional motorbike makes its bumpy way through the paddy fields and village houses. Why own a car when there are no tarred roads – it’s sometimes more practical to walk.

In this part of the interior highlands, about 305m above sea level, electricity is generated using micro-hydro power from the nearest waterfalls and water is piped from streams in the jungle. Rice farming remains the main source of income for most households. The locals sleep early and wake up before the sun rises to go to church. Morning service starts at 5am.

Sandra Tagal, 34, owner of tour company Borneo Jungle Safari, hails from this place. She belongs to the ethnic group Lun Bawang and still calls Ba’Kelalan home despite having lived in KL for the past 10 years.

“What I like best about my hometown is the peace and quiet. I often go home – sometimes up to four times a year – to soak up the beauty of the natural surroundings, to unwind and recharge myself. It is my sanctuary from the hectic life in KL,” she says.

Tagal, the youngest of seven children, has been running the family tourism business for the last six years. She says that Borneo is fast becoming a popular destination for holiday makers from all over the world.

“People are slowly starting to appreciate what we have to offer. When I see them on vacation in my hometown enjoying the things I take for granted, it makes me realise just how blessed I am to be able to call a place like this home.

“It would be a sad day indeed if its rustic charm is compromised by rapid development,” she says.

Sandra Tagal has lived in KL for 10 years but still considers Ba’Kelalan home.

When Tagal first set foot in KL, she was overwhelmed by how quickly everything seemed to move here.

“It’s not the first time I have been away from home (she studied in Newcastle, UK), but it took me about three years to adjust to the fast-paced lifestyle and the heavy traffic. I’m used to it now and I like my life in KL, but I will always be a Sarawakian at heart,” she says.

Life in a longhouse

LIFE might be simple in the Bario highlands in Sarawak, but people there do not live on trees.

Nicholas Sagau, 30, head of web development and design division at Alt Media, a Media Prima subsidiary focusing on new media, is amused when people from Peninsular Malaysia assume Sarawakians live that way.

“I often say in response – yes, and we use lifts to get up to our tree houses,” he laughs.

Born in Miri, Sagau was raised in Bario and thereafter moved to Kuching. After completing secondary school, he left for KL to further his studies.

It was a new chapter in the young Kelabit boy’s life: “It was a big culture shock at first – the local Malay dialect took some getting used to and everyone hangs out at shopping malls and mamak stalls”.

In Bario, entertainment is defined differently, especially through the eyes of a child.

Nicholas Sagau is amused about the misconception that people in Sarawak live on trees.

Sagau grew up flying kites, cock fighting and playing with guli (marbles) and gasing (spinning tops) with the neighbourhood kids.

“We also fashioned sleds out of banana tree trunks and rode them downhill at top speed. It was dangerous, of course, but we were not concerned about it then. We just knew it was really fun,” he says.

They didn’t have electricity but managed with the generator for special occasions. Monday night was one such event: it was MacGyver night for the kids. (MacGyver is an American action-adventure television series that aired from 1985 to 1992 and featured an intelligent, resourceful secret agent played by Richard Dean Anderson.)

“Children from the whole village would gather at my place to watch the show. I was fortunate to live in quite a modern longhouse – my grandfather was the penghulu (paramount chief) and we had a cement floor, a corrugated zinc sheet roof and a TV,” says Sagau.

Communication was limited to radio calls and people from all over the village would line up to use it.

Bario only got mobile phone network coverage a few months ago and Sagau’s grandparents, who still live there, had much difficulty grasping the concept of charging the phone battery.

“They were really puzzled at first – they thought that if you charge the phone you shouldn’t need to pay to use it,” he relates.

“I think Sarawakians are very patriotic to the land and many people don’t want to leave. In Bario, people are very communal. Almost everyone knows each other, and I like that.

“I love how it’s so kampung – it feels like you’re in a place that is cut off from the rest of the world!”

Same difference

“WHAT culture shock? We are not all that different,” says Kelly Koh when asked whether his move to the big city was difficult to adjust to.

“Kuching has seen rapid development and has changed quite a bit from my childhood days. Now it’s just like KL – even our shopping malls are like those you find there,” he says of his hometown.

The 33-year-old project manager, who left Kuching in 1995 to pursue a business degree, says he toyed with the idea of returning home after completing his university studies but decided against it in the end.

“I thought about returning to Sarawak to work but the opportunities were better here,” he says, citing massive traffic jams and pollution as drawbacks to living in KL.

“The worst traffic you get in Kuching is probably a 30-minute crawl in front of the cinema when everyone leaves after a movie. In KL, traffic jams happen anywhere and at any time of the day,” he says.

One of the first things he noticed when he first moved to KL was that he had to spend longer time on the road.

“The heavy traffic on the Federal Highway still remains a mystery till this day!” he says.

Relying heavily on public transport as a college student, the first time Koh took a bus in KL was to Lot 10, a shopping mall in Bukit Bintang.

“I hopped on the No. 10 bus from Subang to Lot 10. That was a really big adventure for me at that time!” he says.

Koh, who has been living in KL almost as long as in Kuching, is now happily married with two young daughters.

He says that it’s a common misconception that people from Sarawak are very different from those in the country’s capital city.

“People tell me Sarawak is a really nice place. They tell me that Sarawakians are friendly and approachable. Some people say we are hardworking. Others say we are lazy. Truth is, you find all kinds of people in every state,” he says, pointing out that many people you meet in KL are not actually from there.

“They might live here, work here – but they hail from other states. Maybe we are not so different after all”.